On being a foreigner

I once walked into an exam room and the first question I was asked was how I ended up with an Australian accent and a last name like mine. Common question; I don’t mind it all, it’s a great conversation starter. But when I was asked if I ever wanted to go home, I didn’t know what to answer. My home across the river? Yes… but that wasn’t the question.

Milan Kundera wrote a book called ‘Ignorance’ about a girl born in the Czech Republic who moves to France and lives there for about 20 years. Here’s a quote about her experiences as an émigré:

“Oh, the French, you know – they have no need for experience. With them, judgments precede experience. When we got there, they didn’t need any information from us. They were already thoroughly informed that Stalinism is an evil and emigration is a tragedy. They weren’t interested in what we thought, they were interested in us as living proof of what they thought. So they were generous to us and proud of it. When Communism collapsed all of a sudden, they looked hard at me, an investigator’s look. And after that, something soured. I didn’t behave the way they expected…. They had done a lot for me. They saw me as the embodiment of an émigré’s suffering. Then the time came for me to confirm that suffering by my joyous return to the homeland. And that confirmation didn’t happen. They felt duped. And so did I, because up till then I’d thought they loved me not for my suffering but for myself.”

‘Ignorance’ talks about nostalgia. At different times in my life, in particularly the last few years, I have been asked whether I have ever considered returning home. Home? I am home! Home is where my mum is. I guess I’m a foreigner and nothing can change that, not even time. Does it bother me, the expectation that I should long for a place I actually feel no connection to? Yes, the expectation bothers me. My discord comes from not being about to understand why I should not consider this — Australia — my home? Because others were born here and I wasn’t? Home is where I raise up my tent, the place I long for when I’m away. The place I long for is the one that inhabits the people I love, my family. That home is not in Central America; what is there is a memory, not my present or the future I choose. But people have this expectation that is separate to my desires, and this expectation renders me a traitor – a traitor for betraying an ideal that is not my own!

Sometimes people ask me if I remember much about El Salvador since when I left I was around 9 years old. I remember, of course; children remember by the time they’re nine. I remember the things that are of value to me, the good or bad things that shaped me. Some memories are still like photographs and seem distant; some more vivid and play over and over. But yes, I remember. It wasn’t all bad. War was almost always background for us (my family). Family, Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s books, school, and Mexican soap operas on TV were in the foreground (for me, at least). It wasn’t all rosy, either, as some people choose to believe, landscapes which they imagine are irreproducible. And although the war was real, it was something you get around by living your everyday life. People do that, we weren’t the only ones. We weren’t specially apt or adaptable; we were common people living in a place where a lot of common people also lived. Sometimes when there’s a big crack in the ground, people learn to walk around it and pretty soon it’s accepted as part of the landscape which isn’t questioned and you can’t suffer over it. Romanticism is for the memories of the past, you can’t suffer from it in the moment.

Yes, I remember El Salvador, certain places and certain people. Why do people doubt that I would remember? Because they (both “romantics” from my country and people born here who insist my home is elsewhere) don’t understand how I could remember El Salvador and yet not long for it again. Memory is not the same as nostalgia. Patriotism doesn’t and shouldn’t rule memory.

Maybe it’s time I write my own version of my story:
I was born in El Salvador, lived there until I was nine. There was a civil war; I was a kid, I didn’t know the reasons for it and I didn’t have a view either way. My uncle was killed by a land mine and my best friend was killed by a bomb; our family was one of the least affected by the war. We immigrated to Australia with all my family. All of it: mum, grandmother, brothers, sister, cousins and aunts. I didn’t know my father very well, I still don’t. If he is still alive, it is highly probable he is still living in El Salvador. My whole family and my whole life, most of my friends, and my ambitions live in Australia. I am Salvadorian; I live in Australia. I am at home.